I think it's just a combination of so many addons, both software & hardware, that you now have so many uncontrollable variables in your setup, you could go mad trying to find it.

Want an almost fool proof way of finding out what's causing it, start fresh, default FS9. Do your flight. And see if it happens.

Now add your addons ONE AT A TIME, and do a long flight. If you make it through all of your software and have no crashes, then move on to your hardware, one piece at a time, doing a flight after each part is added.

With as much as you experience this problem, it is sure to creep up and identify itself this way, and when it does, you'll finally know exactly what was causing your ordeal.

My only problem with this is that we added them like this and flew for some time when we originally loaded everything. This issue never happened.

He went from Vancouver to Toronto last night. Perfect flight until on short final, runway in site, cleared to land. Crash.

The problem is it doesn't happen every time and it's at different areas. It seems to be after long flights--that's the only constant.

What about my FS Global or Ultimate Terrain causing this? I just can't imagine unistalling everything again. It would probably cause my son to lose interest in this forever.

I guess I am saying CTD when in fact it is blackscreen. I thought that was the same thing.

Just this minute my son flew from SFO to LAX in the PMDG 737. Perfect, SHORT flight. CRASH about 2 miles out on final, runway in sight. This time it didn't come up with the balck screen--I could still see the runway--but there was no response and the cursor came up and was slowly moving around the screen.

I disabled the FS Global mesh. Obviously that wasn't it. Now he's flying from KFLL to KEWR. We'll see how it goes with Ultimate Terrain disabled.

Is there another equivalent to Ultimate Terrain that may be just as nice without the issues I'm reading about?

I keep looking at your system specs, and wondering how it is you have these crashes when my little putter, never does, and stays smooth the whole time. 

  But doing so, has thrown forth a few ideas...

- You're running a 64bit OS, is there a chance that one or more addons or something else in your system needs a special driver?  I use XP pro SP3 32bit, by choice, as some of my sound equipment software isn't supported in 64bit. So that's a start.

- Are you an Overclocking I7 user?  If so, does this crashing occur without the overclock?  I ask, because I can run smooth & stutter free on my dinky AMD dual core @ 2.8Ghz, so your stock unclocked setup should by all rights be smoking mine.


- Have you tried doing these flights on a virgin install of FS9?  If it does the crashing with no addons installed what so ever, then it would have to be a hardware issue, or an issue with an addon.
The fact that it's occurrence for you is so random, leads me to believe that it must  be hardware related, as so many other people use all of the same software as you, and in similar combination, and yours is the only one having this problem that I'm aware of.

If you have the HD space, do a second install of FS9, and put NOTHING into it! Do some flights, short & long, and see if it happens.

To do a sister install, just temporarily rename your current FS9 folder, and then also rename the FS9.cfg to FS9.bak. Then proceed with the Install.

Whether or not it crashes this way, will open up some more doors for us to try... hopefully. 

I get a similar black screen CTD that only seems to happen with a certain combination, one of my favourite singles, the aerosoft beaver (modern cockpit) combined with some local scenery crashes this way everytime......I can fly the beaver anywhere else no problem, and I can fly any other aircraft around that scenery with no problem. and it's only the modern cockpit version of the beaver that gives the crash, the old cockpit beaver is fine......where I'm going with this is maybe you try a few different A/C on similar flights.....try a couple of freeware planes and see if they CTD in similar situations (short final) there are a few fairly good freeware planes that would be good test beds for this issue......
For that matter, maybe you could try a couple of flights with your PMDG 737 in locations that you dont have as many scenery addons, perhaps a few European flights or whatever takes addon sceneries out of the equation.

I so glad to hear you got some flights in! 

I've often wondered why the i7s would need to overclocked to run FS9.  It's pretty much a single core application, and as long as you've got over 3ghz on that core, you're good to go for maxing out the sim.

  What could have been happening I suspect is that with it being overclocked, when you would arrive at these densely packed scenery regions, it would some how cause a system spike that took it over the edge that it was so close to already. 
With it running stock, you now have much more overhead for when these large information hits take place.

Just a theory, but it sounds good. 

Steve,

Please let us know how that flight went this morning, and continue keeping us posted on such flights!

I thought you had already reset your OC back to DEFAULT a LONG time ago... that was one of the first things we had told you to do.

Flew Newark to O'Hare---->Perfect!
Flew Toronto to CDG---->Perfect!

We may have found a solution!!